Posted
by
samzenpuson Friday February 14, 2014 @01:30AM
from the cat-made-me-do-it dept.

Daniel_Stuckey writes "Inside the memory card in the cat's collar, authorities found a resentful message criticizing the police along with versions of the virus (iesys.exe) used to carry out the threat messages, which were made remotely, through other people's computers. If you hadn't heard about the story in the news, you'd be forgiven for confusing it with the plot of a Haruki Murakami novel. In Tokyo District Court Wednesday, the former employee of a Japanese IT company wore a black suit, a wide smile, and pleaded not guilty to 10 charges brought against him. The Japan Timesexplained the string of threats were directed at 'schools and kindergartens attended by the Emperor Akihito's grandchildren,' as well as a Japan Airlines jet headed for New York. The plane had to stop mid-flight, costing the airline ¥9.75 million (about $93,000)."

That looks correct to me. "Death threat" is a phrase. It doesn't get a gratuitous hyphen stuck inside it just because there's one put at the end. Properly you'd use a different length of dash here to indicate that it's a whole phrase being hyphenated rather than just the last word, but 1) most non-copy editors don't know that, and 2) dashes on the internet tend to be more pain to figure out than they're worth.

In Japanese society, the police are believed to be infallible. Once arrested for something, the conviction rate is something like 98%. Police make deals with suspects to deal with things quickly and quietly if they confess, but if they don't confess, then their name will be all over the newspapers, dragging their family into disrepute. This is why two people have already confessed to the crimes that this man is accused of.

But apparently the perpetrator doesn't like others taking credit for his work, and sent coded messages on the 2ch message board which a journalist and police were able to verify as containing non-public information that proved the sender was the real culprit, and the previous two accused were released despite having confessed to the crimes. Due to this history, if he is really innocent, his best chance of proving it may be to confess to the crime.

We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and you're arguing that not enough people are being jailed? Poverty is causally linked to crime! Assault, rape, and robbery have been in decline for years, and prison sentences have been lengthening.

It should be a surprise to no one that statistics on the income level of incoming prisoners [wordpress.com] are heavily biased towards the lowest levels of income. Income statistics for released felons [historyisaweapon.com] are even worse. [urban.org] We stigmatize prison to such a degree that it destroys people's ability to earn a living afterwards, and you wonder why we have a >60% recidivision rate. [wikipedia.org] Our "corrections system" is fundamentally broken, and by all measures worsening. Isn't prison supposed to prevent people from returning to a life of crime?

I am appalled at your ignorance, and the idea of a higher incarceration rate is vile. If you have no human compassion, have at least the sense to see when a solution isn't working.

There is indeed a difference. Please pardon my rhetoric; my argument is not necessarily academically rigorous. However, if we can reverse my intention with that remark, and suggest that a criminal record is an excellent way to be unemployed or otherwise in an impoverished state, the statistics range are supportive. Some of them were even shocking; one document I read indicated a low four-figure annual income for some groups. An exaggeration, one can only hope. I also do not think it beggars belief to sugges

Straw man. Try what I actually said: we already have the most expansive prison program in the world, and it is objectively bad at rehabilitation. You should probably be trying to justify either the current system or your idea that somehow it's not punishing people enough. Also we might cover whether punishment or rehabilitation is the primary purpose of a prison system.

Nice soundbite though. Reactionary, fallacious and obvious: a jab to please even the most thoughtless. I hope you didn't stay up too late wr

It's the same old story, prosecutors and police railroading anyone they can. Have you already forgotten about what they did to Aaron Schwartz?

Poor example. While Aaron Schwartz had good intentions, and the punishment far exceeded the crime, there's no doubt he was guilty. In this case (based on the comments, I haven't fact checked), two innocent people had already confessed.

There was an organization, I believe it was Lawyers without border, did an analysis of the high conviction rates in Japan and they found that it was mostly because the prosecutors only took cases to court in which they were absolutely sure they had enough evidence for a conviction.

However, after watching the dramatized documentary http://www.imdb.com/title/tt07... [imdb.com] a documentary of the the systemic faults of the Japanese court system which is convicting innocent people, I have some doubts that it is actu